Sharif Digital Repository

Selection of muscle activation pattern to reach a specific goal by considering the complexities of neuromuscular system and the way it overcomes these complications, are of researchers’ space interest in motor control. One proposed solution for resolving these complexities is the concept of simple module (synergies) that suggests the combination of them leads to more complex activities. In the present work, the existence and arrangement of synergies in the lumbar spine have been studied. For this purpose, a model with 18- muscles at level of L4-L5 under utilized in the static condition. In order to obtain the muscular and stability synergies, a biomechanical model predicting muscle... 

Corneal keratoconus is one of the common eye diseases that usually occurs in the teenage years or the beginning of the third decade of life. In this disease, the cornea thins and loses its original shape and becomes conical. To treat this disease, ophthalmologists use different methods such as using glasses, contact lenses (hard and soft), corneal transplantation, and also corneal cross-linking, each of these methods has limitations, on the other hand, considering that The disease progresses and its severity increases, Ophthalmologists use corneal rings to treat this disease in more advanced stages, implanting a suitable ring in the patient's cornea both increases the strength of the... 

owning to the side effects and disadvantages of conventional methods of cancers treatments such as chemotherapy, currently, scientists are attempting to find new methods to replace them. Furthermore, many human diseases like SCID and Hemophilia are due to genetic disorders and scientists are also seeking to find permanent treatments instead of available temporary ones for them. in recent years, regarding the obtained achievement, Gene Therapy is being considered as a promising method for both cancers and genetic disorders treatment. But due to low efficiency of this method at this stage, there is an endevour among researchers for a more profound comprehension of the basics of gene therapy to... 

A single-degree-of-freedom model is considered for flexible exercise bars based on the lumped-element approach. By considering the side segment of a flexible exercise bar as a cantilever beam with an equivalent mass at the free end, its free-vibration response and forced one under excitation of the grip of the flexible bar is written parametrically. Some experiments are performed on a specific flexible bar to obtain numerical values for the parameters in the model to have it quantitatively known. In the next step, simulation of the model results in the response of the flexible bar under a considered excitation. The response is imported into a multi-segment musculoskeletal software, AnyBody,... 

In the recent years, medical application of robots has been widely developed. Transforming open surgeries to close surgeries has distinguished this novel method to decrease limitations in this type of surgery. In this procedure, two or three small incisions on the skin are used as guides for robotic instruments to enter the cavity, to improve the surgeon’s manipulation and function in surgery. One of challenges in this field is surgeon’s training for laparoscopic surgery. Surgical simulators are used to solve this problem. Lack of instrument for large organs gripping and tissue palpation loss are existing difficulties in available surgical simulators in such a manner that surgeons has no... 

The effects of combined task demands on the way muscles are recruited to balance external loads during posture and movement is of great importance in quantitative analysis of upper arm function. Pain and disability of shoulder joint is becoming more important as population spends more often interacting with computers in seated position and carrying repetitive tasks using upper extremities. Shoulder joint that is more dependent on the muscles for its normal function than other joints such as hip due to its small articular surface and large range motion has been used here to study its coordination during isometric exertions. Since, the numbers of tasks that could be performed are enormous. In... 

Additive manufacturing enables fabricating lattice structures with tailored mechanical responses based on lattice materials. Full exploitation of such a possibility requires reliable and efficient mechanical analysis tools to be explored by topology optimization algorithms for designing the interior architecture of the structures to meet the desired mechanical behavior. However, detailed mechanical analysis of lattice-based structures using the conventional finite element approach is prohibitively expensive due to lattices’ complex and fine features that demand adopting very fine space discretization. As an alternative, equivalent models based on the homogenization principle have widely been... 

Pumps are widely used in oil and gas industry. Therefore condition monitoring for this type of equipment is very important. The motor current signature analysis (MCSA) technique as one of the condition monitoring techniques is very effective in the industry, but it is less used in industry. All conventional methods require additional sensors to be installed in the system; current signature analysis as a sensorless method can reduce the cost of condition monitoring. In this study, motor current signature analysis technique was used to diagnosis a centrifugal pump with a capacity of 187 kW from the refinery industry. The impeller wearing ring clearance problem has been investigated. This... 

During the past decade, micromachining technology has become available to fabricate micron-sized mechanical parts. The miniaturization of almost all types of devices and systems is arguably a greater opportunity for commercial profit and beneficial technological advances (e.g., micromechanical, microfluidic, microthermal, micromagnetic, microoptical and microchemical). However, instead of the traditional evolutionary engineering effort to reduce size and power while simultaneously increasing the performance of such a diverse set of systems, the field of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) represents an effort to radically transform the scale, performance and cost of these systems by... 

Low back pain is a common medical problem around the world afflicting 80% of the population some time in their life. Low back injury can result from a loss of torso stability. This investigation seeks to apply existing methods to new applications and to develop new methods to assess spinal stability during its dynamical activities. In this study, firstly, optimization method is utilized as an appropriate explanation of role of nervous system in controlling of spine movements. Spine which is a complex structure of vertebrae and cartilage has been modeled by a 3D inverted pendulum with a ball and socket joint at L5/S1 incorporated with 18 muscle fascicles. Planning of point-to-point spine... 

From the past, the damask rose has an important place in various pharmaceutical, food, health and cosmetic industries. This product has the largest cultivated area in Iran, which is about 24,000 hectares, equal to 60% of its total cultivation in the world. Considering the conditions required for the cultivation of this plant, including the low water requirement, the expansion of its cultivation has been considered. One of the important obstacles to not expanding cultivation is manual harvesting, which strongly affects the quality and mass of essential oil and rose water. The efforts that have been made so far in the field of designing and producing the rose harvesting machine have not had... 

Keratoconus is one of the most common optical (visual, eye) diseases that usually occurs in youth or early third decade of life. In this disease, cornea gets thin and loses it initial shape and becomes conical. Doctors use different methods for its treatment including use of glasses, contact lenses (hard or soft), cornea transplantation and also cross linking of cornea. Each of these methods have their limitations, on the other hand, considering that this disease progresses and intensifies, ophthalmologists use corneal ring implant surgery for the treatment of this disease in its advanced levels. A good ring implant in corneal causes increased strength and also cause corneal to get back to... 

Keratoconus is a progressive disease in which the cornea becomes thin and due to the presence of internal pressure in the eye and its application to the cornea, the cornea becomes bulging and conical. In recent years, due to the relatively large number of patients with keratoconus and also the ability of this disease to progress over time, the need to study and research on the treatment of this disease is noticeable. Early and non-surgical methods for the treatment of keratocous are use glass and contact lenses, but since the disease is progressive and usually appears more severely over time, ophthalmologists use the method of corneal ring implant for treatment.In this study, 9 types of... 

The main purpose in this thesis is the finite element simulation of the stress-strain behavior in an aluminum-silicon-magnesium alloy, subjected to low cycle fatigue and thermo-mechanical fatigue loadings. This finite element modeling is performed in the ABAQUS software. Two time-dependent and time-independent models are used to simulate the behavior of the material. The time-independent model is the combined nonlinear isotropic/kinematic hardening model, which predicts the mean stress relaxation behavior, the cyclic softening or hardening and the translation of the yield surface, while it ignores the effect of the strain rate. Time-dependent models include Johnson-Cook and the two-layer... 

In this study pollution generated by a electronic cigarette in a bus is observed. Resultant smoke from these products consist of different components which may endanger health and one should make sure them amount in general transport vehicles like bus are in permissible limit. These components are initially in liquid shape and evaporate. Tracking liquid particles are done with the aim of Lagrangian approach. For this the geometry is generated at first. Then structured mesh was generated with ICEM CFD which is a powerful mesher. Different conditions of smoking source and bus doors were studies and results were compared.Change of pollutant concentrations is strictly depend on position of... 

A new microfluidic device is introduced for sorting the particles based on the hydrodynamic resistance induced in a microchannel which is not needed for additional detection or sorting modules. Hydrodynamic resistance affects physical properties, such as size and deformability of the particle. This device could apply application in cell sorting for remedies, diagnostics, and industrial applications. The device design is performed using an equivalent resistance model, and also numerical simulations are performed. For validation of the results, they are compared with experimental results. Moreover, we will discuss threshold particle size and will introduce a way to approximate it to ... 

The aim of this work is numerical analysis of wave propagation in earth by using spectral element method for single and multi phase with application in oil industry. In this method, numerical solution has high accuracy due to using high order polynomials and appropriate integration points. Also, the mass matrix is diagonal by using this method which results in considerable decrease in computational cost with respect to finite element method.
The wave propagation in the mentioned models is studied by many researchers. The main problem in petroleum industry is large dimension of the model which results in high computational costs. Thus, using the proper numerical approach for these... 

This thesis is a research corresponding to Super-Hydrophobic condensation substrates with Nanometer texture. In this study, the foresaid surfaces are fabricated by two methods that are Nano-composite paint and Electrophoretic coating. As a summary for the first method (the Super-Hydrophobic Nano-composite paint), the hybrid coating contains two mineral and organic phases; The organic phase is a two-part clear-coat polyurethane and plays the role as a polymer matrix in Nano-composite structure. Silica Nano-particles are the mineral phase and the two phases of Nano-composite have made connection with silane compounds. Also, surface-modification in Nano-particles for giving hydrophobicity... 

Wound healing by engineered scaffolds is a new step in bio-technology and medical studies in recent years. The goal of the current study is to propose a novel structure for a tissue-engineered scaffold to be used in wound healing. Influenced from the multi-layered structure of natural human skin, the fabricated scaffold consists of two layers to maximize similarity with natural skin. This product is comprised of an electrospun layer made of polycaprolactone and polyvinyl alcohol and a hydrogel layer made of chitosan and gelatin. In order to form a porous medium in the hydrogel layer, freeze-gelation was used instead of freeze drying. The evaluation of fabricated scaffolds was performed by... 

Nowadays, robots are become more common in many important applications, such as academic and industrial issues. One of the most important robots are Multi-Arm manipulators which are used in many application such as moving objects, coloring, automatic welding and etc. Working with this kind of robots needs some vital attentions like planning their moving path. It is Because of the large number of obstacles that they face with in the path. Therefore, not only robots are not allowed to collision with themselves, but also they must not touch the obstacles. In the other words, they need Path planning. Generally, the equations of these robots are nonlinear. Therefore, computers and numerical...